No Stupid Questions

Don't buy Internet from Nazis, no matter the benefit.

I subscribe to the notion that any wireless technology should be considered a last resort due to latency. Hell, it could be 1 Gbps but if the latency is bad (which it always will be when you’re transmitting through the air or nearly off planet) things like gaming, WiFi calling, videoconferencing, etc. will always be annoying.

Think about it: you’re transmitting data to a satellite in orbit. What does it have to do? It has to transmit back down to the earth to access the wired internet. Why would you do this if you’ve got access to fiber or even cable? I’d possibly even consider DSL (though not dial-up) rather than use Starlink.

(All of this sidesteps the sheer idiocy of sending thousands of satellites into orbit only to eventually destroy them.)

A friend of mine had to use Starlink when he lived out in the sticks, near farmland.

I do wireless designs and surveys for a living, and I still prefer my cables. Wireless internet for me is a last resort if you cannot get some form of cabled internet.

My friend told me about the jitter and the spikes in latency, but also if the weather was too bad or really cloudy then his connection would be too bad to even browse.

I'll gladly sit on my VDSL line instead of Starlink and have a stable connection.

Also it means not funding Musk in anyway.

If you have a wired connection, it is highly unlikely that Starlink will be superior in any way.

Satellite internet, even Low Earth Orbit providers, should be the absolute last resort, particularly as the two constellations that are or will be available to consumers are run by billionaires and the one that’s functional (Starlink) is run by an unstable Nazi.

It is not physically possible for a satellite connection to have lower latency than a fibre connection unless the fibre route is in some way excessively convoluted. Pings to the POP are in the 30-50ms range. It’s “fine” for voip.

SpaceX is run by a literal nazi.

Please note that Starlink still uses the regular fiber optic cable internet. Your dish connects to a satellite, which connects to a ground station and from there it's just regular fiber internet. It isn't like all of the satellites are interconnected and form their own internet. That would have way less bandwidth than required, as each hub would be it's own bottleneck.

They do have the capability of using lasers to connect from one satellite to up to four others, but that was in beta for a very long time. I think they actually do use it now, which allows for a satellite over a conflicted region to connect to another satellite which can connect to a friendly base station. This allows hardware from Ukraine to maintain an internet connection when flying over Russia, without using Russian base stations (which would be problematic). But I don't think the regular commercial package offers this, it's only for military use.

It's very hard to get good info on Starlink, as a lot of what Musk and such are saying turns out to be actual BS. They like to hype up their shit. Whenever actual technical details come out, it's usually much more scaled back and simpler than what they said. They do however have actual cutting edge tech on board and a lot of very smart people working on the development of that tech.

Satellite networks (not "Starlink", that's Elon's billionaire project, there are other networks as well run by various other groups) is useful if you live somewhere remote and have no other options, but if you have access to traditional networks, those will always be faster and more reliable.

I run starlink as here in the UK BT dont think I need fiber, here is 10 ping to Google DNS. Not sure what good pings are, but it tops out at 31ms. Over the last week I have an average of 38 ms.

***
8.8.8.8 ping statistics
***
11 packets transmitted, 11 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 16.700/21.017/31.925/4.361 ms

Unlike traditional satellite internet, which uses geostationary satellites that cover a large area but are necessarily high above the earth and can result in latencies of a second or more, starlink and the like use a mesh of moving Low Earth Orbit satellites. They’re much closer to the ground and as a result cover a smaller area but have substantially lower latency (in the 10s of ms).

It’s still no fibre optic connection, but it’s way better than your average DSL or copper cable internet. Its biggest advantage is that it works outside of big urban areas, though.

It's better than HughesNet, but that's like saying getting stabbed is better than getting shot. Unless you are somewhere that it's the ONLY option for internet access, go with a regular, ground based ISP. Even WISPS are better.

fiber is the gold standard. if you have that option then use it. starlink and sattelite is for rural areas where you can't get fiber or even cell towers with modern levels of service.

It works unless you’re top 50 in a fps.

but it’s a last resort. It’s actual been one of the most reliable ISPs I’ve used.